International security authorities spent close to two years pursuing a criminal site called Darkode, where hackers could buy and sell malware meant to steal information. On the international site, which could only be accessed with a referral and a password, hackers advertised and sold their homemade software. Criminals who bought it could steal anything from Facebook follower lists to database account passwords.

Another day, another hack. Yesterday brought news that four million current and former government employees may have had their personal information stolen by Chinese hackers.

Of course, this comes on the heels of what has been a staggering 18 months of hacks. Starting with the Home Depot and Target hacks, we’ve been barraged with story after story about major companies and retailers being hacked for their customers’ data. It’s not just big companies and big-box retailers, though. Law firms are increasingly the target of hackers, due to a combination of factors including relatively lax security and large quantities of organized, valuable information. . . .

Your office may run perfectly – or so you think. We all have room for improvement. The same goes for the workplace. You may feel that, if there are any changes needed, you’ll make that decision. Fair enough. But is it possible that someone else at your office may have an idea you haven’t considered? You won’t know unless you ask. -CCE

What I’m about to ask you to do may initially seem like madness for an hourly lawyer, but I argue that it’s madness NOT to do it.

For the love of all that’s holy, PLEASE spend a day or two (even three) a year, locked in a room away from your office with the most important people in your law firm.

You need a yearly planning meeting like the one I describe below, and without it you’re spinning in circles without a navigation system. You won’t know where you’re going or when you’ve arrived.

Your annual planning meeting is the most critical conversation you will have all year for your law firm. When well-executed, you will emerge with a blueprint for the future direction of your firm. You’ll lay out concrete initiatives and goals that will, in turn, drive quarterly plans, which trickle down to your everyday to-do list.

Thought of in reverse, every activity you engage in on a daily basis should support a quarterly objective which is derived from the road map you draw in your annual offsite meeting. . . .

It really is the iPhone’s fault. Yes, Apple is to blame for designing the most desirable piece of technology of the last decade. So desirable, in fact, that employees of all stripes requested (and, often, begged) their IT departments to toss the increasingly-‘corporate’ Blackberry out the window and allow the use of their personal iPhones for corporate emails and calls. As a result, we have been living in the age of ‘Bring Your Own Device’ where employees use a single personal mobile phone (or tablet) for both their personal email, texting, and social media while also using it for work email, word processing, and other enterprise applications.

Before the Bring Your Own Device era, a company’s greatest out-of-office security concern was an employee who left a briefcase in a taxi. Today, the worry is an employee misplacing a device the size of wallet containing almost limitless amounts of data that criminals or hackers would easily and quickly exploit if given the chance. Clearly, there is an obvious financial motivation for all businesses to protect their own or customer’s sensitive data.

However, lawyers face particular ethical consequences if they fail to take reasonable efforts to either investigate the technologies that they implement or protect their client’s confidential information. . . .

If you wondered whether any main specific websites are affected, such as Yahoo, this list will help you. It will also help explain the Heartbleed bug, and why you should pay attention to what it is. If you want to know whether your specific bank was compromised, this list may not answer all your questions. So, if you’re not sure whether you should change your password, go ahead and do it.

Even better, find a password manager in this list of the best of the best from PC Magazine by Neil J. Rubenking — http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2407168,00.asp. If you use one password for more than one website — and lots of people do — this is a good solution and a wise move regardless of the Heartbleed bug. -CCE

It’s an event that Microsoft has been warning people and businesses about for months. And it is one that hi-tech thieves have been looking forward to as those digital protections start to diminish.

In a bid to get users shifting over to a more modern version of windows, Microsoft has created a website that tells people if they are, or are not, running the software and on 8 March will make a pop-up warning appear on the screens of those who are still using it. . . .

In this post, I had planned to focus on only one article from the Michigan Bar Journal’s Plain Language Committee — “After Seven Centuries, the True Meaning of SS,” by Thomas Selden Edgerton. But, after seeing the quality of the other articles, I could not choose just one. So, here you will also find:

The 2012 Revocation of Paternity Act, by Audra McClure;

A Sound Record Retention Policy: A Matter of Self-Preservation, by Michael J. Sullivan and JoAnn L. Hathaway;

While attending a CLE event, have you ever left your laptop unattended? What if someone steals one of your mobile devices from your car or your home — or what if you inadvertently lose it in some way? Can someone else access your privileged client’s data? -CCE

Sure, maybe Chicago’s taxi seats are stickier than most, and perhaps the cold forces people into taxis more than in, say, Boca Raton, FL. The point is, you’re apt to lose a phone. And these days, with large amounts of data storage, functionality, and computational power on these things, that spells trouble for attorneys protecting client data.